Helen Gahagan Douglas (November 25, 1900 – June 28, 1980) was an American actress and politician. She was the third woman and first Democratic woman elected to Congress from California; her election made California one of the first two states (along with Illinois) to elect female members to the House from both parties.

"Democratic National committeewoman for California from 1940 to 1944; vice chairwoman of the Democratic State central committee and chairman of the women’s division from 1940 to 1944; member of the national advisory committee of the Works Progress Administration and of the State committee of the National Youth Administration in 1939 and 1940; member of the board of governors of the California Housing and Planning Association in 1942 and 1943; appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a member of the Voluntary Participation Committee, Office of Civilian Defense; appointed by President Harry S. Truman as alternate United States Delegate to the United Nations Assembly; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-ninth, Eightieth, and Eighty-first Congresses (January 3, 1945-January 3, 1951); ... lecturer and author." [8]Excerpted from Bioguide Congress

In 1950, Gahagan Douglas ran for the United States Senate even though the incumbent Democrat Sheridan H. Downey was seeking a third term. William Malone, the Democratic state chairman in California, had advised Douglas to wait until 1952 to run for the Senate, rather than split the party in a fight with Downey. Gahagan Douglas, however, told Malone that Downey had neglected veterans and small growers and must be unseated. Downey withdrew from the race in the primary campaign and supported a third candidate, Manchester Boddy, the owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News. When Gahagan Douglas defeated Boddy for the nomination, Downey endorsed the RepublicanU.S. RepresentativeRichard M. Nixon.[9] Nixon's fellow Congressman John F. Kennedy quietly donated money to Nixon's campaign against Gahagan Douglas.[10]

In the primary race, Boddy had referred to Gahagan Douglas as "the Pink Lady" and said that she was "pink right down to her underwear", a suggestion that she sympathized with the Soviet Union. During the general election, Nixon reprised this line of attack. His campaign manager, Murray Chotiner, had flyers printed on sheets of pink paper. Nixon implied that she was a Communist fellow traveler by comparing her votes to those of the far-left, pro-Soviet Rep. Vito Marcantonio. Gahagan Douglas, in return, popularized a nickname for Nixon which became one of the most enduring nicknames in American politics: "Tricky Dick."

Nixon won the election with more than 59 percent of the vote, and Gahagan Douglas' political career hence came to an end. The conservative Democrat Samuel W. Yorty (later a Republican convert) succeeded her in Congress.

It was rumored that Douglas would be given a political appointment in the Truman administration, but the Nixon-Douglas race had made such an appointment too controversial for the President.[11] According to Democratic National Committee vice-chair India Edwards, a Douglas supporter, the former congresswoman could not have been appointed dogcatcher.[12] In 1952, she returned to acting, and eight years later campaigned for John F. Kennedy, who ran successfully against Nixon in the 1960 presidential race.[11] She also campaigned for George McGovern in his unsuccessful bid to prevent Nixon's 1972 reelection, and called for Nixon's ouster from office during the Watergate scandal.[13]

She died on June 28, 1980, at the age of seventy-nine, from breast and lung cancer. Senator Alan Cranston of California eulogized her on the floor of the Senate, on August 5, 1980, saying: "I believe Helen Gahagan Douglas was one of the grandest, most eloquent, deepest thinking people we have had in American politics. She stands among the best of our 20th century leaders, rivaling even Eleanor Roosevelt in stature, compassion and simple greatness."[14]